Fucked up question I know but how come most shootings that you hear about have like 3-4 deaths at most. As deadly as guns are, why is it relatively rare to hear about a shooting that killed a substantial amount of people?
Fucked up question I know but how come most shootings that you hear about have like 3-4 deaths at most. As deadly as guns are, why is it relatively rare to hear about a shooting that killed a substantial amount of people?
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Probably because people run asap, and moving targets are hard to hit. Most of these sort of gunmen are losers, not action stars or people with real combat experience, so once their targets aren’t unaware or trapped, they’re less able to kill.
I’m just guessing, but I’d assume it’s between ‘medical science has come really far so the majority of gunshot wounds aren’t deadly these days’ and ‘mass shootings don’t typically last very long before authorities arrive and when you’re in a hurry you’re probably not stopping to make sure every single shot is deadly.’
I think you’re overestimating how capable these criminals are at using guns lol, as far as I can tell a bunch of people who commit crimes with guns have barley any idea how to properly use it lol. I’m sure theres a bunch of other reasons, but I think a large part of it is most people who’d do a crime like that are dumb as shit
It’s pretty hard to shoot accurately if you’re not an experienced shooter. Movies make it look easier than it is.
I remember the first time some friends took me out shooting targets in a desert. I couldn’t hit shit, even at pretty close range.
There was a mass shooting today at FSU I think 2 people died and like 6 others were injured.
But most shootings have way more victims than 3 or 4 there was another one in Florida a few years ago where a kid killed 17 people, that other guy in El Paso killed 23 people, the Las Vegas shooting killed over 50 people, and Sandy Hook killed 32.
I’m no expert, so forgive me if I get details wrong, but humans are surprisingly durable when it comes to gunshot wounds. As long as you’re not hit in a vital area, you should be able to recover, and even then, I’ve heard many tales of survival from life threatening wounds. Mass shooters typically move quickly because they’re trying to kill as many people as possible before police take them out. The shooters aren’t typically prioritizing their aim when in a situation like that, not to mention, a lot of shooters are inexperienced for obvious reasons. When they do get high numbers, they typically did their research, or just got there by chance.
Edit: Removed incorrect detail after Googling.
While some shooters do have access to shit like ARs that do fire a lot all at once, a lot of these people have never really used a gun before with how young they all are. Not only that but everyone’s running and it must be hard to keep a good aim while targets are moving. i believe it’s more about causing pain to others in the form of trauma rather than genuinely killing as many people as possible
Everyone runs when it starts. Most of the shootings with high death tolls like Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech had victims trapped in a confined space so they couldn’t run.
Police respond pretty quickly to mass shootings (or at least, they’re supposed to..). Max you’ll have ~5 minutes until you’re being shot at yourself, and in that time people are running and hiding. The shooter is probably some loser with zero marksman training, so they’ll struggle to hit anyone further than 10-15 ft. Plus, they may lose steam when (if) the reality of what they’re doing dawns on them.
untrained assailants, running victims
Modern healthcare has gotten pretty good. American hospitals have a lot of experience with treating gunshot wounds.
Plus mass shooters tend to be absolute morons, since if they were smart they’d realize there’s a ton of other ways to get what they want. So usually they’ve overconfident in their abilities, and like 80% of the time they can’t do basic maintenance and their gun jams.
Moving targets are hard to hit.
It could even be argued that in a lot of cases they don’t actually want to kill a lot of people, they just want to become infamous.
People running and fleeing. Moving targets aren’t easy to hit, and once they get further away from you, then they’re even harder to hit. Eventually they will flee the place of shooting. Once you’ve fired your first bullet, you’ve activated a “timer”.
For some shootings, the shooter doesn’t intend to kill lots of victims. Maybe he has certain victims he wants to kill.
Aren’t they usually committed by semi redacted teenagers with zero firearms training?
I went to grad school for Forensic Science. I took a firearms class dealing with bullet comparison, types of guns, etc. Anyhow, our instructor, an experienced cop with an MS himself, said when shooters are actually in that situation, adrenaline and fear take over and you are lucky to hit anything. Same with cops. He said that is part of the reason cops are required to spend X amount of hours at the range, so shooting/aiming becomes second nature that they don’t have to think about. That has always seemed to make sense to me. He was very knowledgeable, both through experience and education.
For school shootings, majority of the perpetrators are mentally ill teenagers who overestimate their ability to commit a massacre. Resulting in very few deaths. Along with the significant development of protocol for response teams so less Salvador Ramos (Uvalde) situations happen.
But generally, shootings are hectic. Especially in larger or unenclosed places. Not as easy to achieve good shots on multiple targets.
A lot more serious injuries than death. If ppl are moving around,you are less likely to hit vital organs
The las Vegas one had like 75 victims…
Believe it or not it’s really hard to hit targets if you are an untrained loser.
Think about it like this – if you put a bunch of cows in an area that kills other cows, they smell the blood and instinctly freak out. Some cows may even kick the person killing those cows in self-defense.
The same basic idea applies to people – some run away, some may attempt to stop the mass shooter to save themselves and/or others.